192 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
And the heartsease a face— 
Yet there’s nothing like a rose 
When she blows.” 
There is no part of the country where 
roses grow so magnificently as here in 
Florida. Nearly all the best ever-bloom¬ 
ing varieties can be grown, and with care 
magnificent blooms can be had nearly 
every month in the year. 
There is probably a variety of roses for 
every need: climbers for pillars, trellises, 
or porches; others like Louis Phillippe 
and Baby Rambler for borders, and still 
others for beds. Some recommend the 
rose as an individual plant, but with few 
exceptions we think it most satisfactory 
when we have all our roses in a garden by 
themselves. 
We have had our successes and we 
have had our failures in growing roses, 
and this paper plans to tell of the methods 
we have followed and of a few conclu¬ 
sions we have reached. 
LOCATION AND SOIL. 
Our soil is high pine land with a coarse 
yellowish subsoil. The location is near 
a gentle slope so that the soil is well 
drained. 
We have one row of about twenty-five 
bushes to the north of the house and about 
twenty feet from it, and another row 
of nine bushes along the south side and 
only about three feet from the house. We 
were advised, and ourselves believed, that 
the ones on the south side would not do 
so well, but they appear to be doing quite 
as well as the rest. It has been necessary, 
however, to water (and mulch) these 
roses very frequently as the ground on 
the south side of the house becomes very 
dry. Recently we have started a rose 
garden with long rectangular beds that 
will accommodate two rows of plants, and 
we are planting at least four bushes of 
each variety. 
PREPARATION OF THE SOIL AND PLANTING. 
Our soil received no special prepara¬ 
tion. A bed three or four feet wide was 
spaded over, and the roses planted about 
five feet apart in a row. Had we followed 
the best advice given us we should have 
incorporated an abundance of clay into 
the bed, and also have worked in an 
abundance of well rotted manure. 
From the very beginning we watered 
the roses frequently, and when the roots 
were well established we began to apply 
some commercial fertilizer. 
FERTILIZING. 
We fertilize three or four times a year, 
giving each bush about one quart of a 
commercial rose fertilizer. We aim to 
fertilize soon after each period of bloom. 
During the blooming period some liquid 
fertilizer is also applied, and during 
winter the wood ashes are systematically 
scattered about the bushes. We do not 
work the fertilizer in but broadcast it as 
indicated for the ashes. If we practiced 
clean culture we should probably prefer 
to work the fertilizer into the soil with a 
hoe or rake, if for no other reason than 
to make it more quickly available to the 
plant. But since we practice the mulching 
system, the fertilizer disappears in the 
mulch and we trust to rain or water from 
the garden hose to wash it into the soil. 
